It’s tailing off now, but there’s just been a bit of a storm, with thunder, lightning, loads of rain and even a few hailstones!

My husband’s out in that. Running.

A run of a few hot, sunny days turned into what seems like an eternity of hot, sunny days. It’s been too hot for me to go outside - hey, I’m from the north east! I’m not used to such heat as one finds in Cambridge in summer - so I languish in the humid heat of my house, with the windows and back door open, hoping a for a through breeze. The cat doesn’ tknow what to do with herself, and hides from the sun under the buddleia bush. She rolls in the muck and brings that muck right in the house. The grass of the lawn in mainly yellow and straw-like.

Yesterday, it came to a head and we had thunder and a heavy sploosh of rain (which sent the cat not in through the open door she was a couple of feet away from, but under her beloved buddleia bush, and wouldn’t come out even when I went to get her. The heat and humidity didn’t leave us, however.

Today, it’s been sunny and hot again, but this afternoon, there have been intermittent rumbles of thunder in the near distance. Now, the light is dark yellow, the rain has arrived. The rain is getting heavier as I type. The thunder’s further away, but it’s still going. The cat’s inside.

Update, about 5 minutes later: the rain is coming down in billions of big fat drops, heavy and hard. They’re bouncing off the wall when they land.

It’s just what the ground needs.

Update, about 2 minutes later: the road out the front’s flooding and the thunder’s getting nearer!

I decided I’d attack the rose hip plant thing beside the buddleia I hacked at yesterday, when I discovered a spider living on a web in it. It was no ordinary spider; it was even bigger than yesterday’s! Today’s was also greener, where yesterday’s was brown. Bark-coloured, you might say. I decided not to prune the rose hip any more after that, and moved on to the buddleia by the window instead. I hacked that down without incident, and decided to do something about the weeds under the other rose hip before hacking at that.

Bad idea. That was when I saw the second spider. Ugh. I decided to leave it for another day. Just as well, really, because now there’s a thunder storm - eek! Actually, it’s not too bad, and the cat’s in now as well. She’s sitting on the scanner/printer, watching it and washing herself.

Ooh, the storm’s getting closer! I’m less happy now, and so’s Puss - she’s hiding on my knee now. Maybe the spiders did me a favour after all, making sure I was in the house before the storm broke.

I don’t suppose the rain will do the cricket any good.

Well, after that display of weather, I’ll assume rounders is off.

I’ve never seen hailstones accompanying a thunder storm before, only rain or no precipitation at all.

I’ve never seen hailstones in August before, either. June, yes; August, no.

The weather’s gone mad! It’s August, and it’s hailstoning! Not only that, but it’s thundering and is extremely windy as well.

What’s the best weather to have a barbecue in? A calm, sunny day? No, a thunderstorm, obviously.

I had a very good weekend. It was boiling hot, so after red duck curry in the Castle (the yellow one), C and I went to the Granta to sit by the river and drink. Being too hot for bitter, I thought I’d have a G&T. There was no ice, however, but I was reassured by the rather good-looking barman that the tonic was cold and he had a nice big slice of lime to go with it. It wasn’t too bad, but I didn’t want non-iced G&Ts, so we moved on to the Anchor, where I sodded the G&T and went onto Smirnoff Black Ice, after all that.

We had a seat right by the river, next the bin and the gate that the punters swing round to tie up the punts to the river bank. Occasionally spoke to other people sharing our tables. The sun makes people sociable. Some blokes in a punt punted over to the docking area for tour punts. The bloke with the pole jumped off the punt and simultaneously set it adrift and pushed another bloke into the river with the pole. When he stood up, his bum was hanging out his cut-off jeans, and pointing right t the crowd of on-lookers outside the anchor!

C had been going on at me for ages to do some punting, but I was too scared of falling off - you have to stand up for god’s sake! Anyway, we eventually decided to go, but the wifey was worried we wouldn’t get back before 10, after which time, it was triple the rate! Anyway, we set off, C with the pole, but he was quite pissed. I wasn’t much soberer than him - or maybe I was, because he persuaded me to give it ago. I have a phobia of falling off things, so this was really scary for me. I got up there, eventually got the thing going, and then we crashed into something - another punt, the side - I forget which, and fell into the punt itself (as opposed to the raised bit you stand on). It took me a while, but I got back up, then off we went. Not too far, though, because we had to get back for 10. I managed to get the thing turned round, avoid the three or four other punts out and about (mainly), but the bottom of the river was really sinky and sticky, and no amount of twisting it would get it out before I ran out of it. I didn’t keep hold of it thereby stranding myself though, you’ll be disappointed to hear, so C paddled us back up to it. I also failed to miss a dense weeping willow, so C had to paddle us out of that too. It seemed never-ending!

When we got back, there were some people already at the counter, making it 1 minute past 10 when we got served. She pointed this out, but I pointed out to her that we’d been in the queue for a minute, so we weren’t really late. She let us off with that one minute, the cheeky mare!

Peckishness followed after that, so we thought we’d try the River Kitchen And Bar (or whatever it’s called) even though it was so late, but it didn’t appear to be doing food at that time, surprisingly enough. We had an extortionate round, melted a plastic swizzle stick over the tea-light-in-a-glass and I thought I recognised the place as somewhere we went for a FAB night once. The place Cheggers got “some bread,” and the fish and chips came with “pea puree.” We went to Gardy’s instead, where the chips had gone seriously downhill since C’s day, but the cheese-and-bacon burger was still as good as ever. It nice, too. The chips were disgusting: nowt but grease in the middle. We got a taxi home after that.

Yesterday was spent sun-bathing and eating and reading and lounging. Like what Sundays are meant to be for.

Today, it was back to work. It rained a lot, with a bit of thunder and lightning. The cat was out while we were at work. We had Chinese from the take-away in Milton for tea. I combed her after tea to reduce the amount of fur she leaves on the carpet. She purrs when I do it now. She never used to.